ERP upgrades continue despite current economic climate

Despite the current economic climate, it’s interesting to see many clients still pressing ahead with ERP upgrade programmes. Whilst one or two clients have chosen to halt their ERP activity, many clients realise the benefits of an ERP upgrade and are committing fully to their goals.

Some of this is the result of support issues on older versions of ERP applications. For example, a recent report from data-migration software maker Macro 4, suggests that 80% of SAP users in the UK, France and Spain will upgrade their systems in the coming years to stay with a supported version of SAP, with SAP R/3 4.6c support currently scheduled to end in 2010.

Also of interest, is that many clients have more confidence in being able to handle ERP upgrades in house themselves, or call upon a small number of freelance contractors to assist in their upgrade, rather than having to use the traditional consultancy upgrade method. Knowledge retention from the initial ERP installation is of course the major player on this, which enables in house confidence to pursue such a major programme.

Vector’s well established ERP division is seeing significant upgrade activity to SAP ECC6, as well as upgrade activity in other areas such as Oracle, IFS and JD Edwards. Many clients (even in these hard times) are still recruiting niche ERP contractors to assist in the initial upgrade, followed by freelance support and training.

Peter Cordner, ERP Team Manager